Rambling, rumbling, rumination

The Old World of Warcraft

The “world” of the World of Warcraft keeps getting bigger… but at the same time, it keeps feeling smaller. The impending expansion opens a new continent to exploration, and introduces a new character class. Talent trees are being rejiggered, as new talents are added for those next ten levels, and old talents are changed, sometimes radically. Class balance is shifting again, and there will be much fuss made of the relearning process, good for some, bad for others. There will be new baddies, and new dungeons to crawl. There’s more snow.

All in all, The Wrath of the Lich King will bring some pretty cool stuff to the game, including one of the most prominent figures in the Warcraft storyline. (Is Arthas reeeeeeeally evil, or just misunderstood? Is he even still in there, fighting the good fight against the superior mind of that demon ghost thing, or is he completely lost to the dark side? Will his son redeem him in the end? Will Jaina retire from public service and start wearing lame outfits, pining for her lost love? …pardon the mixed storylines and lore goobishness…)

And yet…

Where are those millions of subscribers? I just finished my third “ten day trial”, this time noodling around with a Troll Rogue. (I figured, as long as I’m going dark side, I may as well fiddle with a “real” bad guy. No, I’m not going to play a Warlock.) I was playing on the Argent Dawn server, mostly because of BRK’s Orcapalooza. I wanted to see what the server was like, and familiarize myself with the lay of the land. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the event, and in retrospect, trial accounts probably weren’t eligible. *shrug* It was still a cool idea on BRK’s part, and why I was on the AD server in the first place.

I made a bald blue baby troll, and christened him Splattamon. I figured it sounded vaguely bad and Trollish, combining “splatter” with “mon” in a vaguely “rasta” flavor… but since my wife questioned it, it just looks dumb. Good thing he’s just a freebie that I’m not planning on revisiting. He still dances with a cool Capoeira flavor, which I had to get screenshots of. (My ulterior motive for playing a troll, really, beside the Valley of Trials.)

And, well… I never saw more than three players at any given time in regular play. Even in the few major cities that I visited, I only saw maybe half a dozen players at a time, and that’s if there was a group gearing up for a raid or something. (Or so I inferred, since they just stood around in a tight little knot, showing off their mounts.) I did see a couple of raiding parties of Alliance nits wandering through killing NPCs and flagged lowbies, but things seemed pretty slow. Now, maybe that’s how things usually are, especially with the unpopular trolls, but even Thunder Bluff (my favorite Horde location), Orgrimmar and the Undercity seemed pretty quiet.

I’m comparing this with my memories of my first ten day trial, some two years or so ago, back when I needed a friend code. A good friend from my workplace at the time gave me a code, figuring that I’d be interested in the game. He read me correctly, as WoW is fantasy chocolate for me, a delightful place I could spend many happy hours in. Partly out of self control (not wanting to get addicted and wind up ignoring my wonderful wife), and partly out of my inherent distaste for the subscription model, I never did wind up subbing, despite being impressed with what I saw. Back then, I played as a Tauren Shaman, and enjoyed it thoroughly, despite being a complete noob. I just loved wandering around as an anthropomorphic cow, being a jack of all trades, thumping wolves and zapping harpies.

And, well, there were players everywhere. I don’t remember the server, though it was certainly PvE, where AD is a RP server. Maybe the RP servers are also naturally low-population. (I didn’t see much role playing, though, so I’m not sure how much stock I put in the “as advertised” part of the server.) As memories are wont to do, perhaps these memories exaggerate, but it sure seemed to me that playing back then (yes, it’s another one of those “back then” comments, live with it), there were more people playing the game in areas that I was playing in. (The sub-20 areas, mind.) I remember waiting for my shot at a Quest boss, since other cows managed to kill him before I did. I think I finally got his head (or something) the third time he respawned. That was kind of surreal, but perhaps a tangent too far for this wall of text.

Short story long, I probably saw more people playing back then in offpeak (midday) hours than I saw last week playing at offpeak hours (late night). There are a lot of things to compare, and some that don’t directly relate, but just as an aggregate of my impressions and observations, it seems that the lowbie zones are low population. When I wandered down to Tarren Mill (that little Undead outpost in Hillsbrad, deep in Alliance mid twenties), I didn’t see another player between the Undercity and the outpost. There were a few players at the Mill, but for the most part, it was just me and the spiders, and no local chatter whatsoever.

Now, to be fair, I kind of like it that way. I like the quiet. Still, I’d have appreciated a little help in the Wailing Caverns, or in that stupid goblin mine in the northeast Barrens. No dice. It did mean that I could take my screenshots with fewer visual static, but still, for an MMO that ostensibly banks on lots of players, it seemed… quiet.

So why do I care? Mostly because I’m studying the thing. WoW is a the current 800 pound gorilla on the MMO market, so I’m trying to dig into it a bit. Little things I see here and there suggest to me that what I’m calling the WoW “old world” (thanks to Wolfshead for that term, I think) is past its population prime. A quick peek at the unofficial server census shows that “universe-wide”, there’s a huge glut of players puttering around at the level 70 cap, and not much action anywhere else. Even the “free trial” population bump I was expecting doesn’t seem to show up. There is a bit of a bump at 19, for some reason, but the rest is pretty level. The midgame is pretty quiet, comparatively.

Now, I’m no guru of the game, I’m just digging a bit. I welcome other observations, even if it’s just to point out that I’m wrong. I’m trying to see what is going on here. From what I’ve seen, I suspect that it’s the hardcore endgame raiders that are keeping the game afloat financially. There just isn’t a sizable middle or lower level population. That concerns me.

If the population is clustered at the top, it causes all sorts of problems. There’s the “class distinction” with vets chastening noobs, and the social stratification that comes with it. There’s the concept of underutilized assets, draining the system. There’s the lack of new lore and content, with the raid-loot treadmill replacing the leveling treadmill, a bit more obvious of a grind (and the concurrent greater potential for people to burn out on the treadmill). There’s the oft-lamented focus on the endgame by the devs, as they cater (sensibly) to their largest population group (even if it’s a bit of the “cart before the horse” syndrome). There are the ghost towns, and the lonely midgame that means a lot of “old world” content designed for groups gets ignored or played later solo by high-level characters.

The “old world” (game content that shipped with the original iteration of the game, levels 1-60) doesn’t get much Blizzard love, despite the fact that people are still being charged for playing through it. In a quick discussion with Phaelia, I posited that opening the “old world” to free play might be just the ticket to revitalize the game, and get new blood for Blizzard. Of course I have an ulterior motive: I refuse to subscribe, and I love tooling around the “old world”. I’d love it if they opened the old world to free play. Beyond my own wish on that, though, I think that it might be smart to do from a business perspective. If not free (server maintenance being the main argument there), a substantial reduction in cost might be wise to get people involved. (And if anyone could absorb the cost of opening the floodgates, it would be Blizzard. Free trials are a time-honored advertising system.)

I firmly believe that in order for an MMO to have long-term viability, it needs new blood to replace the vets who burn out. It’s a bit of a macrocosm of the “gamer life cycle”: teen has more hours than sense, plays obsessively>grows up a bit, gets a job, plays less as a result>grows up a bit more, gets married, has kids, plays even less as a result>gets tired of the game. (These may be concurrent phases, but generally, a single player isn’t going to stick with a game for an extended period of time, as life, ADHD and burnout take their toll.) The trouble with WoW is that the most current spike of “new blood” accounts may be more multiboxing than actual new players. Again, I may just be pulling numbers out of the aether, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about.

I’m definitely making a lot of assumptions about numbers that Blizzard alone is privy to. Maybe their number monkeys have considered free “old world” play, and dismissed it. Still… it would definitely make a splash in the market. No longer would cash-starved players have to settle for the latest free Korean WoW clone or grindfest, they could turn to the monster itself and see what the difference really is. As much as WoW is maligned (rightfully or wrongfully), it’s still a highly polished game that got where it is for good reason. Games like 4Story, Ryzom, Perfect World or NeoSteam have their niche as free pseudo-WoW games, but if the gorilla itself jumped in the pool, it may be significant.

Potential customers could directly compare the games, and, if they find the WoW taste to their liking, could buy into the expansions and happily increase the revenue stream. Of course, the question is, would such a move mean more profits for Blizzard, as they lose subscribers in the midgame, trading them for more subscribers for the expansions?

This also makes me look again at Guild Wars. Each expansion that Blizzard makes while effectively ignoring the “old world” means their business model looks more like GW’s “expansion” model, just with the subscriptions tacked on. To my jaundiced eye, that makes the pro-subscription argument even less valid, except as something that people do just because they expect to from long habit.

On another hand, if the next Blizzard expansion were to revitalize the “old world” with new content (including world-altering storylines), perhaps it might be enough to drag players back on another merry spin through Azeroth. Whatever the case, it seems to me that the trend of “ten more levels, new talents and territory” just isn’t going to hold up the game in the long run.

I ramble a lot here, but mostly because I have more questions than answers. I’m no expert on MMOs, but I’m trying to learn about them, and poking around a bit is how I do so. Hopefully, I can ask a few questions that haven’t really been addressed, and thereby make a bit of headway. As such, this, perhaps more than other posts so far, is one that I’d like to see comments on.

In summary, then: What would it take to revitalize the world of WoW, from a business perspective, a playerbase perspective, and a world perspective? Is it worth trying to do so? Should MMOs in general plan for sustainable long-term income, or stick to the game industry’s general “hit-driven” nature? Does that short-term focus hurt the state of the design, the genre and the industry? (I think so, but I take the long view in a lot of things, so I’m biased.)

Addendum:

I’m also making assumptions about the subscription model. In my comment to Phaelia, I’m not inclined to pay to play content that is essentially the same as it was two/three years ago. So, what exactly do subscription dollars go to? I’ve heard it argued that they are for maintenance and development. Server and staff (GM) maintenance is a more or less static piece of the subscription pie, and I don’t really mind paying for that. I do think that advertising could cover it, but that’s just a guess. Still, there’s not really “rent” cost for maintaining code. It works, let it run. Make patches, yes, but I’m doubtful that even patches gobble up the rest of that sub price. Blizzard has apparently made out like a bandit on WoW, but maybe that’s media spin.

Still, my (maybe dumb) perception of the cost of subscription is that part of that money is applied to developing more content. When all of that content development is shuffled to the “endgame”, you effectively have the midgame players subsidizing the endgame that they aren’t even playing. meanwhile, the sub money of endgame raiders is going where? Apparently, it’s going to the next expansion. That, in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but if that’s to be the argument, why charge players to buy the next expansion? If the development cost is factored into the sub price, they already paid for it. It all just seems to me like an interest-free loan floated to Blizzard, so they can build the next big thing, instead of making the game that people are paying to play itself a better thing.

That bothers me precisely because the Guild Wars model works, and because I can buy an offline game for the price of a WoW expansion, and get effectively unlimited hours of play. Something just isn’t adding up there, but maybe I’m missing something.

Addendum 2:

I’ve mentioned it before, but BBB’s “dragonflight” content ideas are another tangent I’d like to see explored. It’s a good way to reuse the existing world (yay for clever schemes to reuse content and reduce overhead), and revitalize it at the same time. With a wee bit of effort, it could not only make the midgame a better experience, but it could better prepare players for the inevitable endgame.

True, perhaps that’s part of it. I forgot about that effect, since I’m not sitting at the level cap.
I’ve read of others sitting out for a bit, so that they can get a read on the expansion’s talent and mechanic changes before they spend a lot of time in the game again. Warhammer Online is also hot at the moment, so maybe that’s magnifying the effect.

Thanks, Andy! Interestingly, my friend who gave me the code years ago is also named Andy.

The reason for the level 19 bump is easily explained. A lot of people create “twinks” and never level them up beyond 19. They gear them up with the most obscene gear possible, heavily enchanted, and/or gemmed, and find every possibly loophole and trick to make a level 19 character as overpowered for that level as they can. Then all they do are play battlegrounds in the level 10-19 range. This has become a bit of a sub-culture. I find it interesting that people have to do such things since the core game itself offers almost nothing as far as gameplay variety.
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The “Old World” is dead because the entire game is designed to funnel you to raiding. That’s the sad reality of it, and that is the core difference between how awesome WoW was in the first year compared to how bleh it is now. In the first year, the entire game world mattered. All the instances mattered. All the zones mattered. Your level mattered. Having a friend with certain tradeskills mattered.
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But now, you most likely have all the tradeskills covered either with your own alts, or a friend or two and their alts.
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All the lowbie instances are pointless. Even if you level up an alt, you power level it so fast almost all instances are ignored. Most zones are skipped since they have sped up advancement and you simply do optimal things as fast as you can.
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Reputations with once important factions are irrelevant – like the Argent Dawn.
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The whole game is about being level 70 and then working on your gear. That’s it and that’s all they want you to do. They want you in that endless gear grind where you farm bosses and then fight with friends over gear.
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The way you preserve your old world is you make it so your entire game is fun and always relevant. You do not put the entire emphasis of your game on being cap level and then raiding till you die. You create fun things to do in the game that are not even connected to level.
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This summer I played EQ2 again because you could play for free. It was odd playing an MMO that was a little more MUD like. There are so many things to do that have NOTHING to do with combat or your level. When I logged in to play, I didn’t feel the driving urge to go grind up. The wife and I might tinker with our house, or craft, or run around exploring zones, etc. We enjoy combat, and we like leveling up, but it was nowhere near the only thing to do.
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As a result, many areas of the game are still vibrant and populated in EQ2. And that’s with a much smaller population since WoW pretty much ate EQ2’s lunch. It is interesting to see how better design has a lasting effect in this regard, however.
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-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:

I think what you’re seeing is a symptom of a very vast list of causes. Without grasping at too much straws:
– Initially, Orgrimmar (and Ironforge) were the only cities with Auction Houses. Both were packed. Now you find an AH in every single capitol, which dilutes population
– In a similar vein, the shortest (and safest) path from newbie zone to AH on horde is the bloodelf area. Any player who’s thought about the matter will have his bank / auction toon in Silvermoon, and there’s actually two AHs there. And two banks. Means less crowds again.
– Due to the age of the game, most players who want to play several alts at a high level have actually levelled them to cap by now, and whatever class they have not capped they’re probably not interested in any further
– The level 70 crowd keeping the game alive isn’t mainly hardcore raiders, it’s all kind of players distributing their activities into raiding, PvP and doing their 25 dailies. The latter send people all over Outlands, again not really helpful if you’re keen on seeing throngs of people
– The players actually levelling an alt to cap probably all recognized some time ago that trying to get a group together for old world instances is more time wasted than it’s worth due to all of the above factors, so if they aren’t getting a boost from a capped guildmate they simply don’t bother
– There’s the overall Wrath beta slump, combined with late summertime. Apathy has settled in (just as it did in the Fall before TBC). People start getting into the “why bother, it’s all going to be mudflated” mood, and generally log on less often.

Thanks for the comments, all. I’ll be back with more later, but this piece of Gwaendar’s comment bugs me:

“Due to the age of the game, most players who want to play several alts at a high level have actually levelled them to cap by now, and whatever class they have not capped they’re probably not interested in any further”

I think this is a very valid observation, and I agree. The part that bugs me is the sense that people are “done” with the game. An MMO ostensibly is built for the long run, where there’s never a lack of things to do at all levels and all places. Thing is, the way WoW is apparently playing, it’s almost a single player RPG with a multiplayer mode.

That in and of itself isn’t really a bad thing, but the subscription model just isn’t justified in that case, since it’s possible to get offline games that offer much the same experience at a far more cost-effective price.

I’ve half-jokingly told friends that I’d be all for buying a single-player offline version of WoW, just to wander around the world and take screenshots. I’m more serious about that as time goes on, and as I play the game. I really don’t see much of the point of having it either online or multiplayer, when the population of the world at large is such that the some of the main selling points of MMOs are moot.

And again, I’m generally a solo player in the first place, so I’m personally not all that bothered if they do make a single player offline version, or open the “old world” to free play… but looking at it from a business and design perspective, there are some aspects of the “state of the union” in WoW that concern me, and make me question the long-term viability of MMOs. As an artist in the game industry, with an eye to design, I want to know where this might be going.

The part that bugs me is the sense that people are “done” with the game. An MMO ostensibly is built for the long run, where there’s never a lack of things to do at all levels and all places.

At the risk of continuing to shill for WoW, I think that’s an overstatement. Let’s take the hypothetical case of player Lambda who has a druid, a warlock and a priest at level cap. He has alts of other classes all splattered across the entire 69 other levels. He’s raiding on the druid once or twice a week but brings the priest instead from time to time. He PvPs on the warlock. When he does neither of these things, he runs dailies on all three, and collects gear for his druid’s PvP set too.
The other classes simply don’t hold his attention.

That’s far from being “done” with the game, that’s merely not being bothered with running 6 other toons through content which has been largely untouched since 2004 and which he knows by heart.

Is Joe Lambda such a theoretical construct of mine that he doesn’t exist? Hardly. Out of my list of symptoms before there are two root causes for current player disaffection, the anticipation of Wrath (the fora & blog armchair analyst metagame is most certainly more interesting to quite a few people than actually playing a game which, in its current form, is already condemned) which will end with the release, but the other one (and largely commented upon since TBC got released) is the staleness of old Azeroth.

To spell it out, there’s been exactly 4 non-raid zones added to the 1-60 content in 4 years, the two new races’ newbie zones. And two areas had had an overhaul with a lot more quests in the same timeframe.

I suffer from terminal altitis. Last time I counted I have 36 toons on my account, most of them strewn about between level 16 and 55. I’ve probably read every single quest text and completed almost all of them in that range not just once but several times. I could level from 1 to 40 in my sleep, not just picking the fastest zone combination but the most exotic if I wanted. On both factions, mind you. I’ve tried every single profession in the game and leveled each at the very least to 250. It’s simply all déjà-vu and for Achievers, which are the demographic most catered-to, there’s nothing left in that range.

And that’s an issue (which has already been commented upon to death) which Blizzard has said, over and over, that they don’t plan to address. That’s where there is a severe weakness in the long haul from the game, because 1 year after Wrath is out, there will be 30 zones in Azeroth and Outlands which nobody wants to see ever again. And it’s also a recursive problem. Stale content demotivates old players from revisiting, making them empty. Empty content demotivates new players from lingering and exploring, because no matter how you slice it, you’re playing an MMO expecting to run into other players from time to time. I’m currently leveling a toon on a PvP server for real for the first time in over 3 years. Well, guess what, the real bummer in 56 levels is actually that I’ve had perhaps 5 outdoors PvP battles in all that time, and been ganked thrice by a high-level toon passing that way.

Anecdotal evidence? Certainly. But the very emptiness of old Azeroth speaks volumes.

Verbose and shill as much as you like, Gwaendar. You make good points. (Besides, it’s not like I’m a model of concision.)

I’m not opposed to WoW, nor do I think that it’s in its death throes. I just see some curious decisions that I don’t think I’d have made, and I want to understand why. To my mind, the “world” of WoW should be constantly changing or evolving; that’s the nature of life. That progress in the world is largely in “ten level, new continent” chunks isn’t really all that fulfilling to my little mind.

Perhaps I care also because I actually like WoW. I like the lore, I like the art direction. It’s fun to play, and fun to look around. Seeing the old world languish makes me a little wistful for what might have been, had Blizzard decided to to content upgrades in the old world, rather than what they are doing.

I also like to plan for sustainable, long-term viability. That means lower burst profits, but more stable income over time. (I want resource-efficient HOT, not instant, inefficient healing…) That reflects my general economic philosophy, since I really hate the instability of the bust/boom capitalism cycle, and the superstar “hit driven” current philosophy in the game industry.

Nice article and comments! I’ve written about this extensively and it’s an issue of great concern with many ramifications.The bigger a virtual world is, the emptier it feels. Populations become spread out over larger areas and the result is a lonely and empty MMO experience.

I remember this is exactly what happened to EverQuest a few years ago and it’s probably gotten much worse. Low to mid level areas become ghost towns which penalizes new subscribers even more because they have nobody to interact with, group with, trade with or even talk with. When that happens new people never get to feel the true MMO experience of a world that is brimming with life i.e. players.

To make matters worse, MMO companies like Blizzard have made their “endgame” content that most desirable content. This has the horrible effect of making players race to the level cap. Even worse, Blizzard has made leveling easier, created new hero classes that get to skip 55 levels of content and introduced an accelerated leveling scheme called “Recruit A Friend”.

It’s getting to the point that leveling has become so trivialized that they may even be removed altogether at some point. Players are already starting to ask for this and trust me, once players get a taste of the hero class in WoW they will demand it for their new characters.

I too am concerned that all of those amazing instances have been rendered obsolete with the release of every expansion. The truth is that it’s far easier for players to keep leveling and get quest upgrades or AH upgrades then it is to run Strath, Scholo, Dire Maul or soon any Burning Crusade instance. Players always take the path of least resistance.

Take Naxxaramas, t was hailed as one of the best raid dungeons ever designed and created. It took them literally years to do it and thousands of man hours. They released a few months before the release of the Burning Crusade and it was made obsolete. They got so much flack for doing that they decided to repurpose it for Northrend — lucky for them they could.

They wasted lots of time and money on that dungeon when they could have updated content for casual gamers instead of the .01% of the playerbase that would actually see it. They knew full well it would be obsolete almost instantly but released it anyways.

Azeroth is a dying world right now with all of the level 70’s doing the same content and huddled in the same areas. Once the new expansion is released that problem will be even more profound and pronounced. I hate being part of an empty dying virtual world. It just feels wrong to me. There’s nothing worse then creating an alt and being the only person in the town. If I want that, I’ll play a single player game.

WoW is showing signs of premature aging and it’s rather sad to watch it go into decline. The reason is that all of the design decisions done in the name of expediency to appeal to casual gamers are coming to fruition. Nothing can be done except to watch it fade away and remember the Azeroth that once was.

To make matters worse, MMO companies like Blizzard have made their “endgame” content that most desirable content. This has the horrible effect of making players race to the level cap.

I think that’s a problem inherent to any game which has an expanding skill and talent set through a leveling system, and not directly tied to the quality and desirability (or lack thereof) of the endgame per se.

Let me illustrate with WoW again: while there’s a specific appeal and challenge to run an instance or a battleground with only the tools your character has at its disposal at low levels, by design a character’s playable arsenal of skills is only available at the level cap (even if much of what you get in the meantime is mostly just a more powerful version of what you had). Even for non-Achiever types, playing their toon in their mature form has an appeal of its own, different that from the one of playing it in its more limited, lower-level versions.

Of course, the endgame’s core flaws revolve around the fact that in most activities you can actually only use 10% of this complete arsenal, but that’s a slightly different design problem.

It’s the whole leveling and character growth aspect of the design which drives the leveling and now speed-through Azeroth. You’d need a very different character advancement model by design to avoid making the endgame so desirable, like getting players to come into their full power a LOT earlier in time (eg in 10 levels but I wouldn’t actually talk about levels, rather, in a time span of a similar order of magnitude of what I heard about AoC’s destiny quests or the upcoming DK’s three starter levels), and from there, if you want to change your toon, you go explore and acquire a complete skillset in replacement of what you have either in one chunk or during the roughly same timeframe again. In such a game one of each individual zone or regions’ raison d’être would then be to grant one of these complete skillsets.

Since I very much lack general MMO culture, what I just described probably exists and is well known, but hey, I’m just an ignoramus with a loud mouth :)

G, a different advancement scheme (other than leveling) is definitely something that would be a cog in a better design. Players need reasons and the ability to play with other players. Reasons are often part of why players play MMOs in the first place, but we as designers can incentivize grouping (while not ignoring solo play, mind) and other events that will involve players in the world. Still, you can only do so much to channel players into certain actions, and too much gets onerous anyways.

The bigger duty of a designer is to provide the tools for people to play the game. The “sidekick” system in City of Heroes is apparently a good way to do this, but that’s still a level-based game. In a game without levels, it might be easier to get players of disparate experience and skill to interact because the metrics of comparison are diminished. Cooperation can step up if competition backs down. Giving every single player the ability to affect the gameplay in a significant, positive way, regardless of any time spent grinding (or not) is a fantastic way to foster community.

I don’t know the best way to do that, but I do know that the leveling scheme isn’t the best way.

Another reason, apart from the aforementioned battleground twinking, is because all the newbie quests are quite engaging and unique, compared to the next 50 levels which seem to be exactly the &$%^* same for EVERYONE.

Aye, I figured there might be a slightly bigger population bump in the sub-twenty area because of the free trial accounts, it’s just the 19 spike that looked a bit strange. I agree that the quests for the early zones seem more well-thought out.

I think Blizzard are planning for the long run, but WoW is not part of that future.

The idea behind adding another 10 levels in Wrath is flawed. In Wrath, AQ and Naxx should be given Heroic options, jacking them up to lvl 70 Encounters on a par with SSC.

Kara should be dumbed down to where it really is more on par with UBRS v2.0, the one you could PUG but which was still a challenge, not the one that initially destroyed coordinated Guilds.

And while we’re on it, why not Heroic versions of BRD, LBRS, UBRS, etc? My Hunter finally completed the UBRS key just a couple of months before BC came out. Kind of pointless, after that.

By giving Toons better gear you increase the i-Level (or C-Level) of the Toons without increasing their actual level.

How to get the casuals, who’d probably never advance past a dumbed down Kara, to purchase Wrath if it mostly seems to just add Heroic 70+ Instances?

Just like BC introduced Jewelcrafting, Wrath will introduce new Tradeskills while also raising the Cap level of every Tradeskill, just the 425 Trainers will be in Northrend.

S5+ PvP gear would only be available from vendors in Northrend.

The Mounts allowing you to ferry around passengers? Only available from Vendors in Northrend.

There’s so much Blizzard could have done to ensure Wrath goes Platinum while simultaneously reviving interest in the Old World, instead they’re just shifting the population to the latest, greatest, newest zone.

Congratulations, Shattrath! You’re destined to become the latest Ghost Town!

“I think Blizzard are planning for the long run, but WoW is not part of that future.”

Good point. I guess what bothers me is that in the end, MMOs are being used to milk game players for a few years, in a slightly tweaked and extended version of the standard game product lifespan. They really aren’t reaching their potential, or living up to the promise that I feel is implied in a subscription model.

If they are just going to be glorified treadmill RPGs, they should be sold as such (offline), and multiplayer should be optional.

[…] but I want to see what an old game world does to revitalize itself, especially since I called for a revitalization of the “old world” way back before it was announced. I want to see whether it works out or not, especially since CAT […]